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4.2%
Cut in Payments Projected: Tell Congress This is Unacceptable
Physician groups are starting to gear up efforts to prevent an estimated
4.2 percent reduction in Medicare fees in 2004. Early indications are that
there is limited support in Congress and the administration to prevent the
reduction after helping physicians in 2003, which cost $54 billion.
What can you do
to stop this from happening? Contact Congress to help prevent cuts in
physician Medicare payments. Go
to
www.acc.org and click on the "Take
Action Now" icon in the lower right, and, after logging in, click on
"Write Legislators" on the top menu bar.
Unless
Congress acts, physicians are slated to receive a 4.2 percent cut on Jan.
1, 2004.
The cause of this cut
is a flawed formula that is used to calculate physician payments. Despite
action by Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS) earlier this year to prevent a 4.4 percent cut from taking effect on
March 1, the underlying flaws with the formula remain and will cause
reductions in physician payments through 2008 if Congress does not
intervene.
This
volatility is forcing an increasing number of specialty physicians to
reconsider their participation status, limit services, restrict the number
of Medicare patients they will see, or retire early.
Without action from Congress, the instability in the current
Medicare payment system will undoubtedly continue to chip away at the
access to quality care that beneficiaries have come to rely upon. Again,
please send your Congress members messages! Go to
www.acc.org and click on the "Take
Action Now" icon in the lower right, and, after logging in, click on
"Write Legislators" on the top menu bar.
2003 FEE CUTS
AVERTED!
Appropriations Bill Turns 4.4% Cut into 1.6% Increase
In
perhaps the biggest legislative victory for physicians and their patients
in recent memory, Congress has passed a provision as part of the omnibus
FY 2003 appropriations package that will avert another cut in
physicians’ Medicare reimbursement and instead provide a modest increase
of 1.6 percent. Importantly, because of ACC-recommended technical
corrections in the fee schedule, most cardiovascular specialists will
receive a slightly larger increase of 2.2 percent on average.
“This victory is a true testament to what the ACC, other cardiovascular
organizations, the AMA, the Alliance of Specialty Medicine, and other
physician and nonphysician health care groups can accomplish if they are
committed to an issue and work together through a sound strategy,” said
ACC President W. Bruce Fye, MD. “Every ACC member who responded to the
alerts to contact their legislators deserves to be congratulated, as does
the College’s dedicated staff, who have worked tirelessly on Capitol
Hill for nearly 18 months to make this happen.”
Although fees for most in-office procedures will increase, in-facility
procedures will not do as well. In general, though, all
cardiovascular-related procedures will see increases.
Echocardiography
4.2%
Pacing/EP
2.5%
Nuclear
4.6%
Interventional
0.7%
General Cardiology
1.3%
Total
2.2%
Because many cardiologists perform a mix of procedures, the overall impact
on individual physicians will vary.
Thanks to the commitment of House Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.,
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Thomas, R-Calif., and Senate
Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, reached a deal to add a
provision to the appropriations package that would be a 10-year fix and
give the CMS the authority to correct erroneous estimates made in 1998 and
1999, when the CMS failed to account for nearly 1 million beneficiaries in
calculating future payment updates.
It is unclear at this time how the change in fees will be implemented, but
the College will make that information available to members as soon as the
CMS provides further details. While it is also unclear what the exact
effect of the fix will be in future years, it will undoubtedly be better
than what the CMS had previously projected.